Autor: Lonergan, Bernard J.F.

Buch: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Titel: Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas

Stichwort: Analogie der materia prima bei Aristoteles; Folgen dieser Sicht: gegen Materialisten, Plato, Kant

Kurzinhalt: ... sicut se habet aes ad statuam et lignum ad lectum, et quodlibet materiale et informe ad formam, hoc dicimus esse materiam primam

Textausschnitt: 1. The Analogy of Matter

255 The old naturalists had concluded, not only from beds and tables to an underlying subject 'wood,' but also from wood and bones to an element 'earth' and from gold and bronze (they could be melted) to an element 'water.' Aristotle accepted the principle of such analysis: any change is defined for thought by stating the underlying subject and the variable determination or form; and what holds for defining thought, also holds for the real thing .1 But while he accepted the principle, he corrected the conclusion. The ultimate subject of change in the older philosophies had always been some sensible body; that was the stuff of the universe; it alone was substantial and permanent; all else was accidental and mutable.2 Against this materialism Aristotle argued that every assignable object was subject to change; the element 'air' could be changed into the element 'water'; and so he concluded that the ultimate subject of change could not be an assignable object; it could be neither quid nor quantum nor quale nor any other determinate type of reality;3 it could not, of itself, be knowable;4 its nature could be stated only by recourse to analogy. (154; Fs)

Quod igitur sic se habet ad ipsas substantias naturales, sicut se habet aes ad statuam et lignum ad lectum, et quodlibet materiale et informe ad formam, hoc dicimus esse materiam primam.5

... materia prima... se habet ad formas substantiales, sicut materiae sensibiles ad formas accidentales.6

... (materia prima) ita se habet ad omnes formas et privationes, sicut se habet subiectum alterabile ad qualitates contrarias.7

256 Such is the defining analogy of matter. In its limit it defines prime matter, which is proportionate to substantial form. And as prime matter of itself is not knowable, so substantial form has the complementary distinction of being knowable by intellect alone.8 (155; Fs)

257 The full significance of this analogy is not easy to measure. It eliminates the materialism of the old naturalists for whom the real was the sensible.9 It corrects the misguided intellectualism of Plato, for whom the intelligible was real but not of this world. One might even say that by anticipation it puts in its proper place and perspective, that of prime matter, what Kant thought was the thing-in-itself. It does all this because it places in the most material of assignable material things an intelligible component known by our intellects and identifiable in our knowledge; that intelligible component, form, species, quiddity, has as much title to being named 'cause' and 'nature' as has matter itself; and what it is is fixed by its relation to the ratio rei, the ratio definitiva rei, the ratio quidditativa rei.10 Conversely, it is only because Aristotle's real thing is not the materialists' real thing that Aristotle was able to satisfy his own epistemological law: unless particulars are identical, at least inadequately, with their quiddities, then the former cannot be objects of scientific knowledge and the latter cannot be realities.11 (155; Fs)

258 But the significance of the analogy is not confined to its metaphysical limit of prime matter and substantial form. Besides prime matter, there are sensible and intelligible matter, common and individual matter, appendages of matter, parts of the matter, material and individual conditions. What are all these? The answer is simple if one grasps that natural form stands to natural matter as the object of insight (forma intelligibilis) stands to the object of sense (materia sensibilis).12 But to convince conceptualists, a more detailed approach is necessary. Just as the correspondence between definitions and things was the ultimate ground of the analysis of change into subject, privation, and form,13 whence proceeded the notion of prime matter, so the more detailed correspondence between parts of the definition and parts of the thing should bring to light the other elements in the analogy. Accordingly we proceed to sample a lengthy and complex Aristotelian discussion.14 (155f; Fs)

259 Segments are parts of circles, and letters are parts of syllables. Why is it that the definition of the circle makes no mention of segments, while the definition of the syllable must mention letters? A typical solution is found in the contrast between 'curvature' and 'snubness': curvature is curvature whether in a nose or not; but snubness is snubness only in a nose. In general one may say that, as without proportionate matter there cannot be the corresponding material form (just as without a proportionate phantasm there cannot be the corresponding insight), so for different forms different measures of matter are necessary. There must be letters if there are to be syllables; but the necessary letters are not necessarily in wax or in ink or in stone; hence letters are de ratione speciei or partes speciei; but letters as in wax or as in ink or as in stone are partes materiae. Similarly, one cannot have a particular circle without having potential segments; but the notion of circle is prior to the notion of segment, since the latter cannot be defined without presupposing the notion of the former; and so one can appeal either to the potentiality of the segments or to the priority of the definition of circle to conclude that segments are, with respect to the circle, partes materiae.15 (156; Fs) (notabene)

260 The notion of priority is of wide and nuanced application. The right angle is prior to the acute; the circle to the semicircle; and man to hand or finger. In each of these instances the former is a whole and the latter a part; in each the definition of the former must be presupposed by a definition of the latter; in each, accordingly, the latter does not enter into the definition of the former and so is a pars materiae. But complex cases are not to be solved so simply. Parts of a living body cannot be defined without reference to their function in the whole; again, the whole itself cannot be defined without reference to its formal principle, which constitutes it as a whole; accordingly, the soul and its potencies must be prior to the body and its parts. Still, it does not follow that parts of the body are mere partes materiae, that 'man' can be defined without bothering about corporeal parts just as 'circle' can be defined without bothering whether it be made of wood or of bronze. The difference arises because the principle of priority must here be complemented by the principle of proportion between form and matter; a circle requires no more than intelligible matter; man requires sensible matter;16 and so while bronze and wood are not de ratione speciei circuli still flesh and bones are de ratione speciei hominis.17 (156f; Fs)

261 A sufficient sample has been taken from Aristotle's involved discussion to make it plain that matter is not merely prime matter but also the matter that is sensibly perceived and imaginatively represented. If further one wishes to understand why the discussion is so complex, why Aristotle warned against simple rules of solution,18 even perhaps a conceptualist might consider the hypothesis that the real principle of solution is neither one rule nor any set of rules but rather the fashioner of all rules, intelligence itself in act, determining what it takes as relevant to itself and so de ratione speciei and what it dismisses as irrelevant to itself and so pertaining to the partes materiae. (157; Fs)

262 In any case let us close this section with a summary account of the analogy of matter. In the first instance, matter is the matter of common sense, the wood of the table and the bronze in a statue. But unless corrected, that notion easily leads to materialism, whether the crude materialism of the old naturalists or the elaborate materialism of the nineteenth-century atomists, who equally considered the real to be the sensible. On the other hand, the material world is neither sheer flux, as for Plato, nor unknowable in itself, as for Kant. The higher synthesis of these opposites lies in defining matter as what is known by intellect indirectly. Directly intellect knows forms, species, quiddities; but these knowns have antecedent suppositions, simultaneous suppositions, and consequents, all of which, as such, are indirectly known. (157; Fs) (notabene)

263 Antecedent suppositions are matter in the sense that genus is named matter and specific difference is named form, and again in the sense that substance is named matter and accident is named form; such usage is Aristotelian and Thomist but still somewhat improper. Simultaneous suppositions fall into two classes: if they pertain to the intelligible unity of the form, as letters to syllable, they are parts of the form, de ratione speciei, and in Thomist usage common matter; if they do not pertain to the intelligible unity of the form yet are ever included in some fashion in the concrete presentation, they are partes materiae or material conditions or individual matter. Finally, consequents that are contingent and potential, as segments to circles, are again partes materiae. Clearly, it is the second of these three types of indirectly knowns that offers the principal meaning of the term 'matter,' and it is this meaning that the analogy of matter considers chiefly. The general analogy is the proportion of wood to tables and bronze to statues; but the specifically Aristotelian analogy is that natural form is to natural matter as intelligible form is to sensible matter,19 that is, as the object of insight is to the object of sense. (157f; Fs) (notabene)